


31 Days of Court Ordered Bonding and Rubbish Duty

by ozmissage



Category: Being Human, Misfits
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozmissage/pseuds/ozmissage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How bad can thirty-one days of community service possibly be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	31 Days of Court Ordered Bonding and Rubbish Duty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wnnbdarklord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wnnbdarklord/gifts).



> Thank you to Aurilly for the beta!

**Day 1**

Orange is not George’s color.

He likes to think it’s because of his general paleness, but he only has to glance to his side to see his paler, deader friend making orange look not only appealing, but downright fashionable. Mitchell catches George looking at him and quirks an eyebrow as if he somehow senses George is thinking about fashion while standing in the dingiest community center locker room either of them has ever seen.

It’s more likely he knows George is stalling though, and George’s suspicion is confirmed when Mitchell pats him on the back and says, “At the rate you’re going, our sentence will be served before we ever leave the locker room.”

On a better day, George would have pointed out that Mitchell was motivating him in the wrong direction, but on this particular day he could only take a deep breath to steel himself for the horrors yet to come. He let the breath out in one great whoosh and put one foot into the suspiciously stained orange jumper the entirely unwelcoming probation officer had issued him (oh God, he has a _probation officer_ ). He grimaces, but puts the other one in as well.

It’s all a bit too much to take so he stops for a moment and lets the jumper sag at his waist. This sort of disaster is exactly what comes from having a vampire for a best friend. If he concentrates hard enough, he can vaguely remember a time when the idea of spending four weeks painting over graffiti with a bunch of delinquents was absurd.

He gives Mitchell a plaintive look.

“I’m multi-lingual. I went to _university_ , Mitchell. _University_.”

Mitchell leans against the nearest locker, calm and collected. He even has the audacity to smile. “Well, now you can add ‘picked up rubbish’ to your CV. This is a life experience. It’ll be good for you.”

George ignores Mitchell’s snickering and slides his arms into the jumper. He was wrong. This isn’t what comes from being friends with a vampire. This is what comes from being friends with a Mitchell.

There’s a sudden bang and George jumps.

“It’s just the door--” Mitchell begins, but he’s cut off by the appearance of his mini-me. With his lanky frame and black curls, the boy in front of them could easily pass as Mitchell’s younger brother. Well he could if Mitchell wasn’t over a hundred years old.

The boy claps his hands together gleefully and a grin that even the Cheshire cat would find impressive appears on his face. George opens his mouth with every intention of begging Mitchell to let them go on the lam rather than face whatever insanity is clearly about to spill out of this mad looking boy’s mouth, but before he can get the words out, the mad boy begins to speak.

“Well, well, well looks like we’ve got some new blood. Welcome to the party, fellas. What are you in for? Shivving? A bit of the old slap and tickle in the park? You look the type. I’m not going to say “no offense” because you’d have to be a real arse to find that offensive in this day and age. And you blokes aren’t arses, are ya? Ah, never mind. Plenty of time to find out later. I’m Nathan, by the way. I’m the funny one…you know your mouth is open there, mate.”

Nathan pauses for a breath before shielding his mouth from George’s view and stage-whispering to Mitchell, “Is he special? You know, eats the paste and all that? I used to eat a bit of paste myself. I’m not special though, well, my cock is downright magical, but the rest of me is pretty typically above average--”

“Nathan, what the hell are you talking about your cock for?”

A girl appears seemingly out of thin air from behind one of the lockers, but it’s more likely she came through a door of some sort, not that anyone could have heard her over Nathan’s constant chattering. George has a deep desire to hug her even if she does look like she could and would cause him a great amount of physical pain if the mood struck her.

“Kelly, don’t be rude, we have company. This is Handsome One,” Nathan says gesturing to Mitchell, “and that’s Ears.”

Kelly laughs and despite himself George can feel his face growing warm.

“That’s…I’m not…my name is George,” he sputters.

“Ah, sure it is, Ears.”

George shakes his head slowly and shoots his most withering glare in Mitchell’s direction.

“This is all your fault,” he says, and Mitchell gives George’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Come on, Ears, it won’t be that bad.”

 

**Day 2**

“This is…awful. Just… I was in the trenches during World War I and that was preferable to this,” Mitchell says gesturing to the admittedly creative sexual positions someone probably not unlike their current companions had seen fit to spray-paint on the side of a daycare center.

“What happened to ‘it won’t be so bad, George’ or it’s a ‘life experience George’?”

“Three walls ago it was a life experience, now it’s fuckin’ ridiculous.”

Mitchell drops his brush into the nearest bucket, sending a splash of paint flying across Barry’s shoes. He steps back out of reflex, but George can plainly see it’s a second too late for his trainers.

“Sorry about that,” Mitchell says. “I’ll pay for the shoes.”

“It’s all right,” Barry mutters in the general direction of the pavement. “They were quite old anyway.”

If George were forced to rank the five people they were serving out their sentence with from the most objectionable to the least, Barry would easily earn the fifth spot. He’s quiet, well-mannered, perhaps a bit shy, but George can relate to that more than he’d like to admit.

“Seriously, Barry, let me take care of it for you,” Mitchell insists, patting himself down clearly looking for the wallet that is currently locked up in his locker back at the community center.

Barry smooths his hair down nervously and manages to momentarily meet their eyes. “It’s Simon, actually.”

“Simon?” George asks.

“Me. I’m Simon. Not Barry. Nathan just calls me Barry.”

“Ah,” George says, “he seems to have a habit of that. I’m not actually called Ears, by the way. I’m George. And this is Mitchell.”

Mitchell shrugs.

“Handsome One works, too.”

“Ignore him,” George says, and Simon offers him a small smile in return.

Just when George is beginning to think this whole probation thing won’t be so terrible, Nathan comes sailing by on roller blades… _roller blades_ …screeching, “Barry and Ears, sitting in a tree, f-u-c--”

Mitchell gives him a light shove and Nathan tumbles into the paint cans.

“Hey! Did anyone see that? You saw that, Barry. That’s assault…or shoving, either way it’s not appropriate community service behavior. And you’ve got paint all over my jumper; it looks like a bird shat on my arse!”

Mitchell, George, and Simon do the only thing they can do when faced with a Nathan tirade: they return to painting.

“I think we can call it even now,” Simon manages to say between bouts of laughter.

 

**Day 5**

The day before the full moon always makes George twitchy. He can’t help but tap his hands against his jeans during the long walk to the community center. He feels like running, but he knows he has a long day of fishing crisp bags out of gutters ahead of him and he’s going to need all of his extra energy to get through it.

He’s trying to work out the best place to change (it’s so much harder to find a decent spot in London; it’s no wonder things ended so badly for David Kessler) when Kelly falls into step beside him.

“Morning,” she says. George nods hello.

“Morning.”

They walk in silence for a moment before Kelly comes to a sudden stop.

“Oy, are you a bleedin’ werewolf?”

George pales.

“What…no, NO, I’m not a…werewolf…that’s ridiculous. Silly, really. That’s silly and ridiculous.”

“Then why the hell are you thinking about cages and the full moon and worrying about eating people. Either you’re a werewolf or a nutter. Which is it, George?”

George tries to concentrate on remaining calm and not on being a werewolf. Or the fact that he shares a flat with a vampire and ghost. Or that he and Mitchell are serving out community service because Mitchell slugged a cop in the face to keep a group of his old vampire friends from tearing them both limb from limb.

“Ah, that sucks, mate,” Kelly says and George curses.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“I can read minds, can’t I?” she says in disgust. Because obviously everyone can read minds. George should know that.

“Why? Why can you read minds?”

“The same reason you turn into a werewolf: the electrical storm. God, Nathan’s right, you are thick. We’ve all got superpowers now. Yours sounds a bit useless though. You and Alisha should start a support group.”

“ There was an electrical storm…and now you have superpowers? This is insane. I’ve clearly gone mad.”

George begins walking again. It seems like the thing to do.

“Hang on!” Kelly calls after him. “Mitchell is a vampire? Like in those fucking awful books?”

_Twenty-six more days_ , George thinks, _just twenty-six more days_.

“You’re no picnic either!” Kelly shouts after him.

 

**Day 7**

Nathan is lying in a pool of rapidly drying blood, the handle of a mop sticking through his stomach. He sits up, very much alive and all smiles as usual.

“Now, who wants to see me stick a fork into the wall socket again?”

Kelly elbows George in the ribs.

“Let’s ask Curtis to rewind time so we can just shove him off the top of the building like I wanted to in the first place. I’m telling ya, it takes him longer to climb back up and chances are he’ll get distracted by someone’s breasts and wander off.”

George nods. It could be a sign of how far gone into the crazy he is that that sounds like a brilliant idea.

 

**Day 12**

“Come on, it’s been two weeks. I want to meet all of your little friends. I baked cupcakes and put tiny little orange icing jumpers on the top. Please, please let me come!”

Mitchell and George exchange a quick glance. Eight in the morning is way too early for an excited Annie. Especially an excited Annie who has spent the previous night baking.

“You do realize it’s community service, not primary school that we go to everyday, right?” George asks.

Annie rolls her eyes at him.

“I’m tired of being cooped up in the flat. I’m going with you.”

George sighs. That’s her resolve face and there’s no arguing with Annie’s resolve face.

“Come on, then. But if they can’t see you, that’s not an invitation to get all pouty and move their stuff around.”

“I don’t get pouty, George. You get pouty.”

Mitchell winks at him. “She’s got you there.”

They make it halfway to the community center before they run into Curtis and Nathan. Annie snatches at George’s hand when she sees them rounding the corner.

“Do you think they’ll be able to see me? I mean is super powered really the same as supernatural? I don’t remember Christian Bale chatting up any ghosts in the last Superman film.”

“There are so many things wrong with that sentence…”

“Good morning!” Curtis calls cutting George off before he can launch into a detailed examination of Annie’s mixed pop culture metaphor.

“Who’s your friend?” Nathan asks, waggling his eyebrows in a way that George assumes is supposed to be alluring.

“See, they can see you,” Mitchell whispers in her ear and Annie squeals happily.

“Hang on, what friend?” Curtis asks.

“The gorgeous girl standing right in front of you,” Nathan says, pointing. When Curtis continues to look confused, Nathan holds his hands out in front him to illustrate breasts as if that might be the only part of Annie that Curtis could see.

“You must be the dead girl then,” Nathan surmises. “I’m Nathan. I’m immortal. Is that insensitive?”

Annie shakes her head so emphatically her curls bob.

“It’s okay. Mitchell’s immortal too. Sort of,” she says, extending and then retracting her hand before settling for an awkward wave. “I’m Annie. Sorry, I don’t know if we can actually shake hands or not…some days it works, some days not so much. Depends on my mood really.”

“I’ll chance it,” Nathan says, offering her his hand. Annie giggles before giving it a squeeze.

Curtis stares blankly at the place where he suspects Annie might be. He’s clearly uncomfortable, but too polite to say so. He decides to shout instead.

“HELLO,” he says. “I’M CURTIS.”

Mitchell holds a hand up to stop him. “She’s dead, Curtis, not deaf.”

Annie shrugs and loops her arm through Nathan’s. “It’s a common mistake.”

George watches with apprehension as they skip ahead, chatting excitedly.

“That is not going to happen,” George mutters as the sound of Annie’s giggles fill the air.

 

**Day 14**

George runs through the back alley with Simon close behind. Every time he draws a breath his lungs ache, but moving is preferable to being sucked into a tiny black hole created by the angry science geek Nathan managed to piss off by dumping his slushie on the guy’s head.

“Does this sort of thing happen a lot?” George asks quietly as he crouches with Simon behind a dumpster.

“Only since the storm,” Simon whispers back.

George chances a look around the dumpster and sees the tail of the black hole guy’s jacket fluttering past. He hopes Mitchell and the others are somewhere safe.

“It’s more trouble than it’s worth, isn’t it?”

Simon wrinkles his brow. “What is?”

“Being special.”

“It’s better than being a freak,” Simon replies, fidgeting with his hair.

George nudges Simon’s shoulder with his own. “You are not a freak. Trust me; speaking as a werewolf, I know a freak when I see one.”

Simon blushes.

“You’re not a freak either, you know,” he says before returning George’s nudge with one of his own.

Bonding behind a dumpster on the run from a blue-slushie covered, black hole producing maniac—this is not how George envisioned his time in community service going.

 

**Day 20**

Every few seconds the room is filled with the sound of laughter. Laughter accompanied by pointing.

“What are they talking about?” Simon asks George. George isn’t at all sure, but the pointing is not comforting. He looks to Mitchell for an answer.

“You sure you want to know?” Mitchell asks.

George and Simon nod.

“They’re playing marry, boff, kill--”

That’s all George needs to hear. He holds up a hand to stop Mitchell from continuing.

“We don’t need to hear how many times we’ve been tossed off a cliff while you’ve been shagged senseless,” George says.

“For your information, Kelly thinks having sex with a dead guy is ‘fucking disgusting’ so I’m out of the running. Apparently werewolves are marriage material though. And Alisha…do you have a hoodie?” Mitchell asks Simon.

“At home.”

“You should wear it tomorrow,” Mitchell says with a wink.

**Day 27**

“You two should just be glad you haven’t had to deal with any dead social workers,” Nathan says. He’s rewarded with a slap from Kelly that nearly sends his pint flying out of his hand.

“Shut it, Nathan,” she warns.

“What, we’re all family here, am I right? Well, maybe not a family exactly because I don’t think you’re supposed to dream about putting your tongue up your sister’s--”

Kelly slaps him again.

“Hey!”

George glances at Mitchell beside him and sees him attempting to hide his smile behind his pint.

It strikes George suddenly that he’s going to miss these people. Maybe even Nathan.

“Oy, Ears! Get me another pint, will you? The lady here spilled half of mine on this fine establishment’s table.”

George sighs. He probably won’t miss Nathan _that_ much.

 

**Day 31**

He folds his jumper carefully. Despite thirty-one days of wear, tear and impromptu paint fights with Nathan, it’s actually cleaner than it was when it was issued to George in the first place. He had it dry-cleaned for the next poor bastard who had to put it on.

Simon watches him forlornly.

“It’s been nice…having you around,” he says.

“Well, I can’t say I enjoyed picking up used condoms from the streets of London, but I will admit community service wasn’t as awful as I expected it to be. Thanks to you and the others.”

George places his jumper on the bench and fishes around in his jean pocket for a note card before pressing it into Simon’s hand.

“This is my phone number and Mitchell’s and the address to our flat,” George says. “You should come around sometime. Maybe you can catch Annie on a good day so you can meet her properly. You’ll like her.”

“She makes very good cupcakes,” Simon offers.

George smiles, “Yes she does.”

“I’ll visit,” Simon says. “I promise.”

“Good. Just don’t tell Nathan where we live.”

George feels a pang as he leaves Simon in the locker room clutching the note card. He pushes the feeling away as best he can and meets Mitchell outside the doors. Together they walk away from the community center, each of them sneaking glances back when they think the other one isn’t looking.

“I told you it wouldn’t be too bad,” Mitchell says finally.

“I suppose you were right,” George replies. “But that doesn’t mean I want you to punch another police officer.”


End file.
